Do banners still work well?

Are you only posting on here to increase your backlinks? It's ok to do that, but we do expect some give-and-take, like checking basic spelling, posting new topics instead of just replying to existing ones.

I think in-your-face advertising will be blocked by many (if not most) users, the way forward is to have unobtrusive advertising. A well designed page with a small amount of advertising gets better results than a badly designed page with advertising plastered all over it. A clean design will show-off a low volume of advertising well. Also people who see you're providing a decent site are likely to click and advert because they respect the site the advert is on and want to support it.

There have been some studies that people are starting to develop "ad blindness" where anything that looks like an ad, especially a banner ad, is automatically filtered out by the brain if not already by the software. I don't even notice banner ads anymore unless they blink obnoxiously and then I refuse to click on them because they are horribly distracting.

Michelle

I think it's much a question about relevance and placement. Although sometimes I also automatically detract from the ads because of familiarization, there are still millions of people just recently discovering the web, and these are the people that responds to any kind of online ads well...

It would depend on what you are advertising. If it is something graphic in nature likes games, stock photos, etc. banner ads would work just fine.

Whats annoying are the rapid animations and strong colors that some use in their ads - which makes the page load very slow

For back link it is useful but want to be paid banner then beware of it because google trying to find all paid link.

Have you thought of switching to traffic?
It yields better results and it is unobtrusive.